Monthly Archives: May 2015

I recently traveled to Augusta, GA. Inside the small but pleasant airport there are icons of the city’s claims to fame.

Although he was actually born in South Carolina, James Brown lived in Augusta at his aunt’s brothel. This statue of him is just down the street from the Confederate War memorial. It is so popular that the city has installed an interactive camera. You text some numbers and the camera will take your photo and send it back to your phone. I had not realized how short he was until I stood next to him.

The airport has this small shrine to JB at the entrance to the airport. And the city named the local arena after him too.

The other claim to fame is golf, an inexplicable Scottish sport. There is a televised tournament here at a private golf course and apparently thousands of people with nothing better to do (they could be watching paint dry, it’s much more exciting) show up to watch the fun in action. The golf course is located behind this thing (perhaps it’s a water tower, perhaps a flying saucer?).

There is a statue of some famous golfer that is one of the first things that one sees after deplaning. This is in case you don’t know that this place is now famous for golf, instead of it’s former claim of being a mercantile capital of the sugar and cotton business.

The tourist board also flogs the area’s ties to lesser celebrities. Early movie comedian Oliver Hardy is from a nearby area, so there is his museum. American President Woodrow Wilson lived near the James Brown Arena (which was not yet built of course, except perhaps in an alternate universe) when he was growing up.

Finally, I include this griffon just because I like it, and it is across the street from JB’s statue. The reflection is me and my favorite brother.

This statue is of James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia. He sounds like he was a rather nice sort of person, he was an MP, was an English prison reformer, friend of the Indians, opponent of slavery, and a founding member of the British Museum among other accomplishments.

The town sits along the Savannah River, and there are ancient locks that bypass the rocky shoals so that they could ship out the cotton and sugar.

You know that you are in the south when you see Spanish moss hanging from the trees.

Because the town was not burned in the American Civil War (unlike Atlanta), there are lots of beautiful buildings still standing, like this one which was the Cotton Exchange (place where cotton was bought and sold).

The gorgeous old sugar mill is a fine example of a Victorian factory. (Quite possibly Satanic to work in, but rather lovely on the outside.)

And because it’s the South there is the mandatory monument to the Confederate War dead. It has the generals where they are easy to see, the enlisted man is high up at the top.

This holiday has lost most of it’s original meaning: to honor the war dead. Instead it is seen as a day off work and the official start of summer fun. I decided this Memorial Day to plug into the traditional. The old cemetery sponsored an event, so I went down to check it out. They had re-enactors of the various wars, starting with the original war for independence.

Then there was the frontier regiment honoring a comrade who fought in the Spanish-American War in Cuba.

Then there were guys portraying WWII soldiers.

I did not take a picture of the guys representing the German Army. One of them explained that the army was not necessarily in favor of Hitler’s policies, but the sight of the swastikas totally creeped me out.

The military sections include both persons who died in combat and persons who served in the military.

The crowd that gathered was interesting, old veterans, currently serving military, young people, bikers, survivors and me. My father was a combat veteran, and it certainly impacted his life. It was a beautiful tribute and not just a day of barbecue and beer. Then I went home and quilted a quilt top made for the Lori Piestewa Center (the first Native American woman killed in Iraq) on the Hopi reservation.

I belong to a service organization. One the the things that we do is raise money for a children’s cancer treatment center. The big way that money is raised is by raffling off a house. Over half of the available (8000) raffle tickets have been sold at $100/ticket. From now until June 12th, people from the group have to be at the house every weekend, to show off the house.

This is a picture of what the house looks like, but not the actual site. If you mentally replace the mountains and pine trees with huge power lines and the grass with rocks and dirt, it would be pretty accurate. People ooh and aah over the house as they go through it, it is new and shiny. For $100 one can enjoy the fantasy that this house will be their’s.

I think a lot about houses because I would love to have a house that did not have stairs. (The above house has 16 stairs between levels, a visitor counted them last week 😉 ). Which brings me to my dream house. My sister in law called me about this house and I leapt right into the fantasy. It has everything I would want in a house, including jillions of stairs.

It comes with a built in jungle, no waiting for one to grow.

A painted ceiling and a gas and electric chandelier.

The dining room sideboard and table are original to the house and match the woodwork.

Does it have a ballroom on the third floor? Of course.

And a massive stained glass window, a standard feature of this sort of a house.

Alas, this property is doomed to remain a fantasy because reality set in. It’s too big of a project for us old bats, and of course the sheer size of it, makes it daunting to consider. (Although everyone I have spoken to thinks the 5 car garage would be great).

When I came back down to earth I realized that I am actually living in my dream home. I have deer that come and go as they please (no responsibility there). I have a beautiful view of the mountain from my front door. And my house is a solidly built custom home, there is not another one just like it. It was fun to contemplate, but reality is just fine.

Who is more iconic a cowboy than John Wayne? He played American football in college until an injury ended his sports career, so he became an actor. He played a variety of roles, but is perhaps most famous for his cowboy movies.

There was a diner across the street from the university that I went to, I vaguely (it has been a number of years since I was college student, a large number) remember it being open early and late, so of course we sometimes went there for giant cinnamon buns and hamburgers. And I just lived down the street. As this place has survived and thrived for such a long time it has made it to the status of local landmark, and icon of eating. Instead of just being on the corner it has taken over half the block, and with this expansion the owner has filled the empty walls with art and Navajo rugs. Of course there are lots of typical southwestern art, but the single most repeated image is John Wayne.

John Wayne will help you to find the high chairs and drinking fountain.

I went to a small pow-wow at the Institute for American Indian Art, a boarding school in Santa Fe. Pow-wows range from gigantic, like March Pow-Wow in Denver, to the small and personal, like this one.

This guys are fully decked out in Plains regalia. It is possible that they are from a Plains tribe, most of the local Indians are from one of the nearby Pueblos.

This little guy is dressed in Plains regalia.

Miss Navajo (unlike most beauty pageants, to be named Miss Navajo one needs to be able to kill and dress a sheep) had on her traditional outfit, but her son did not.

This detail of a dance outfit shows the mixture of tradition and modern.

I was in a store when the movie Pocahontas came out. Some little girl was pestering her mother for a Halloween costume so that she could look just like an Indian. Except when there is pow-wow, we just dress like everybody else. But at the big pow-wows you have to have a outfit to be able to dance. Sometimes they call for a certain style of dance, so only people in that outfit can dance, when it’s intertribal anyone can join in.

Spring comes late here because of the altitude. But it’s not as bad as in the mountains, they have about a 30 day growing season. Even within town, things start blooming at different times because of the small differences in elevation. My lilacs are just starting to bloom.

The plum tree out front has been blooming for a while.

I do get a few wildflowers in the yard.

And the high altitude iris test garden has started to bloom. It didn’t bloom until much later last year because of the May blizzard.

Besides being able to see for miles in the four directions, we can also see for miles upwards. In the summer there are massive thunderheads towering above the mountains. This time of year we can watch fluffy clouds against an impossibly blue sky.